The Edge of Days

Sometimes I sit swinging my legs, one at time, looking over the edge of days. Here I weigh things, the bread, the effort to stand up and go on, the stacked calendars saved to remember the death day of dogs, when the minutes of rubbing the soft belly blur away, the loaves of impatient meals I did not make, weighted as they were by regret, the heaviness of things I did not parse or punctuate properly, now unsorted in the drawer with the single buttons and the rubber bands, the days pressed like wildflowers in the book with penciled notes of the first trout lily in New Hampshire, the breath of Louise leaving after slamming the door to her life as she exhaled the last cigarette. I do not want to weigh these things, but being here at the edge, I wonder when my exhalations will no longer be measured, when I will leave out of dusty rooms and walk into the sea, taking my stories knotted together into a string ball, and give them up to dance, an unmeasured tune, my molecules unorganized by soul or words or body when the weight of days grow too heavy.